Friday, 28 October 2011

OK, so this afternoon I was reading the proofs of my new lesbian vampire novella - The Vampire Skye, which might possibly even be out in time for Halloween (I'll post an update when I have a definite date).

It's not particularly long - 15,000 words - but it took me a while to work out locations, history, and an explanation for vampires that's half-inspired by and extremely loosely based on some recent scientific stuff.

But just before I started I was struck by a BBC news article. Headline details: in the UK the latest consumer price inflation figure is 5.2%, average pay settlements in the private sector are 2.6%, and company directors' incomes (salary and bonuses) as reported by Incomes Data Services also increased in the last year - by 50%. Average pay increase for this group was 43% and average bonus payment increased by 23%.

I sat there joining the dots, making sure I'd read the decimal points correctly, and thinking I'd been writing about the wrong kind of vampires...

Tuesday, 25 October 2011

I know I'm being tardy getting posts up. Planning to move house tends to do that. Even though we're only going a few miles/kilometres down the road, it's still the same processes, hassling solicitors and packing things in boxes for the move...

Meanwhile:

I had a story recently in Seducing the Myth, the Lucy Felthouse collection of erotic fiction based on myth. 'Andi in Chains' re-imagined the Andromeda story in a kind of pulp fiction style. Both book and story have had some impressive reviews, and in addition to ebook format the book is now available as a paperback from The Book Depository, which is UK based but ships to something over 100 countries including the US and most if not all of Europe, and a lot of other places as well. Plus, shipping is free.

I also did a blog post on the background to the myth - the characters, who they were, the geography and how it relates to real places you can still visit today - and some background on the (re)writing of the story. It's on Lucy Felthouse's blog, the 'Myth Monday' entry for 24th Octobber 2011.

Wednesday, 12 October 2011

When I'm silent for a long period it usually means something is going on. In this case, several things. The 'day job' - which is freelance writing for various corporate entities - has been mad. I've had a whole bunch of projects that have run along the lines of 'We don't know what we want, but we want it now!' On the whole it seems that by the time a good idea has been run through half a dozen working groups and committees, everyone loses track of what's going on. So it's been my job to work it out, pull it together and suggest how it can actually happen. Apart from that we're moving house soon so things are disappearing into boxes ready for the move. Pervy stuff has largely been consigned to our lock-up for the time being (yes, that means the dungeon furniture).

And various bits of fiction have been published.

So... the fiction.

I announced a month or so ago I had a novella out, Addicted to Rope, available from Xcite and Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk (and a few other places).

Since then, Sizzling Hot Books reviewed it. The reviewer says: It sucked me in quickly and I wasn’t ready to let go at the end. Fulani is very good at giving Ruth and Leo a lot of depth in a short amount of time. The transformation that overcomes Ruth is quick, but detailed. You can get a good feel for how her mind is working as she accepts and challenges what Leo presents to her. Addicted to Rope is hot. The pages sizzle with anticipation, fantasy, and intimacy. I would recommend Addicted to Rope to anyone who likes reading a lot of the mindset of characters exploring being submissive and anyone who likes the psychological development of a character in their erotica. The whole review here.

I also had a story out in Lucy Felthouse's edited collection, Seducing the Myth. 'Andi in Chains', is a reworking of the Andromeda myth. The book's available on download from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Xcite's third-party Erotica and Romance Ebooks site and elsewhere.

The collection's had several stunningly good reviews. So far as my own story goes, NightOwl Reviews, who says: Andi in Chains by Fulani - Re-imagining of Perseus and Andromeda's meeting was certainly different! Andromeda--better known as Andi--was into bondage and kink, Perseus was a tough son of a gun mercenary and well virgin sacrifice took on a different twist. This story amused me and was possibly my favorite.

And Mitnik at Erotic Whispers says: Andi in Chains by Fulani was a tale of bondage and kink and certainly hit the mark with its very unique take on the meeting of Perseus and Andromeda. Full of fire and passion that is sure to get your imagination sparking and ready for the rest of this erotic ensemble.

JBP Reviews doesn't specifically mention my story but says of the collection as a whole that it's: filled with erotic intent with tons of mystical creatures this book is a great read! I found myself reading each story in earnest and wanting more and more.

Then, yesterday, I got a print copy of Hurts So Good in the mail. This is an edited collection of bdsm-based erotica edited by Alison Tyler and published by Cleis Press. Presumably it's also available through all the usual Amazon, Kindle and other channels as well - but time's tight and I'm sure you can use Google as well as I can.

The last story in the collection is my 'The Uniform and the Rope', which features Japanese bondage and some rather hot scenes, but along the way also manages to point out that much of what we in the US and Europe consider 'Japanese' in bondage terms has much less specifically Japanese history than we might think. Some of it was developed in the US, and some of what we consider Japanese now was actually picked up by practitioners in Japan when the work of a certain John Willie became available there. More information on this comes from the Bondage Project and DS-Arts.

I might also point out the first story in Hurts So Good is 'The Sound of One Hand Clapping' by Nikki Maginnis, to my mind one of the newest and freshest erotica writers on the scene today.

And finally... My latest novella, a mashup of lesbian vampire bdsm with a (fairly) unique take, I think, on vampirism and its implications, went to the publisher earlier today. Given the amount of other work I've been doing it mainly got written in short bursts at around three in the morning, but I think it's quite entertaining. I enjoyed writing it, anyway...